MKs, Christian leaders vow to confront radical Islam

"The most important issue is how to cooperate to stop new threats facing Israel," said Knesset Member Gilad Erdan (Likud). Erdan suggested that "what we are having in the Holy Land is not only war over settlements and territories."

"Maybe the same conflict is a war between religions," he added, citing comments by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Highlighting the global scope of radical Islam, Eldan said Christians and Jews, who share the values of democracy, freedom, and human rights, had to cooperate to secure the future.

Knesset Member Ran Cohen (Meretz), also a member of the Caucus, said: "We didn't imagine three years ago that we would need the caucus as much as we do."

"We are living in a special situation – 60 years after World War 2, some of our neighbors decided to prepare to destroy us," Cohen said, adding that much of the world was failing to respond.

Knesset Member Gideon Sa'ar told the meeting that "the world is facing a historical confrontation between Western values and other values, represented by radical Islam," adding that "the core of the problem is not this (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict. This conflict is a consequence of the core problem."

Examples from the 1930s  

Sa'ar said "very few" understood the extent of the problem, and drew parallels with the late 1930s. "If you were going to tell people in London before World War 2 that half of their city would be ruined by bombardment, it would be very difficult for them to understand that," he said. He also warned of "the tendency in this kind of conflict… to sacrifice the interest of players in order to avoid a conflict," a tactic he said was doomed to fail.

Malcolm Hedding, the Director of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, also linked the rise of Nazi Germany to the modern threat posed by radical Islam and Iran. "Twelve educated men sat in a room and decided to liquidate 11 million people," said Hedding, referring to the decision taken by the Nazis to carry out the Holocaust.

"Today, people in radical Islam are dedicated to doing the same."

Hedding said that "the restoration of Israel in our time is not a political coincidence, it is a fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham 4,000 years ago."